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A doting dad who built an outdoor rink every winter for his son, Glenn Francis Roche had an eye for safety at the Lakeland Mills sawmill where he worked for nearly three decades.

Roche had been concerned about an explosion that blew up a sawmill in nearby Burns Lake, B.C., in January — where workers cited dust levels from milling dry, beetle-killed timber as a potential catalyst — enough so that he warned fellow workers to keep the mill clean.

Roche, 46, was himself meticulous, always parking his polished pickup truck well away from the other workers' vehicles so it didn't get scratched.

An operator of one of the two big band saws that make the first cuts on logs fed from the outside yard into the mill, his work area was always pristine.

Roche likely was blowing dust off his saw with an air hose during a lunch break when an explosion ripped through the building Monday night, said sawmill worker Lorne Hartford, who counted Roche as a "best buddy."

Reflecting on the incident Thursday, Hartford said it is tragically ironic that a man who had warned his co-workers about the potential risks associated with the explosion in Burns Lake has been killed in a similar explosion.

Roche died of severe burns at the University Hospital of Alberta in Edmonton Tuesday evening. He immediately had been airlifted to Edmonton following the explosion but aggressive medical intervention was not enough to save him.

Roche was a man that others looked up to, including Hartford, even though he was older than his late co-worker and friend. He encouraged others to stand up for themselves, but never said anything bad about anybody, said Hartford. Roche is the second explosion victim to die, following Alan Little, 43.

"This is a sad, sad thing," said Hartford, who was not on shift Monday.

He remembers his friend fondly as a devoted husband to his wife Rhonda and father to 12-year-old son Mason, a top-notch hockey player.

Father and son were particularly close, Hartford recalls. "They were together all the time. He didn't have an average relationship with his kid."

He also remembers his friend as a man who never stopped moving — simply couldn't stand still. He loved camping, fishing, boating, dirt biking and snowmobiling. And he was very smart — knew a lot about the Middle East and religion.

Hartford described Roche as a little man with a big heart who tackled life with gusto. "He loved every minute."

As the community continues to deal with the emotional aftershocks of the explosion, WorkSafeBC officials are gearing up for another major sawmill investigation.

On a dreary Thursday, portable trailers that will house WorkSafe investigators arrived at the Lakeland Mills site, trundled in on large trucks directly from Burns Lake, where an on-site investigation of an eerily similar sawmill explosion just concluded.

As the structures arrived, about a half dozen men gathered in front of a metal sign. It buckled in the explosion, looking almost like a crumpled piece of paper — an indication of the force of the blast at the sawmill 200 metres away.

WorkSafeBC and government officials have not linked the explosion in Burns Lake to dust, but as the scope of the catastrophe sinks in, workers are increasingly turning their minds to the extra-fine powder that comes from the dry, beetle-killed timber milled for years at both explosion sites.

Hartford said Lakeland was a clean mill. Sawdust didn't collect on the floor, but it stuck to the hand rails and beams and hung off the roof of the building, 10 metres overhead. Unlike the sugar-like particles that were produced before beetle wood was milled, this dust was like soot, "silky almost," he said.

Hartford initially didn't believe it could be a factor in the explosion, but because the mill was fuelled by natural gas, he wonders what else it could be. "If it was a dust explosion, then mills are in trouble. Our mill wasn't that dusty," he says.

He shudders now, thinking of the potentially dangerous environment he worked in. "We were walking in gun powder and didn't know it."

Millworker Harry Hubler has little doubt the fine dust was a factor in the Lakeland explosion.

He said he cuts beetle-killed timber for firewood and it's full of pitch — a sticky resin produced in pine trees as they try to expunge the beetles. Hubler believes pitch combined with the dry wood to create a volatile powder.

A hobby wood worker, Hubler said if you collect the dust from a sanding machine and throw it into a fire, it creates a small explosion. "People don't realize that."

The only way to fix the problem, said Hubler, would be to install a powerful system to suck the air out of a sawmill continuously. His main concern now: "It's going to happen in another mill."

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B.C. mill workers mourn second explosion death

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